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Vytra Call Center Six Sigma Implementation - Using A New Tool for New Results

Using A New Tool for New Results

AIM-Activity Information ModelingTM provided the solution. It collected over 60,000 data points in four weeks. It only required Customer Service/Call Center personnel to answer 3 brief questions per hour that automatically popped-up on their computer screens. "Our result was a clear picture of costs per call- by call type, product, line of business and customer types. The time AIM required was extremely short and the cost of our AIM project was minimal. We determined that AIM delivered its information at plus 99% confidence level."

Finding Cost Opportunities In Poor Quality

Kerry Edwards' experience with AIM was focused on customer service, mostly in the call center. She knows that customer service is constantly going through change, with the most adaptable organization being the one that succeeds best. AIM was put in place in the Member Service Call Center because it is the largest part of customer service. According to Kerry, "There was a great need to understand the costs of incoming calls and what caused that cost. We were using an average cost per call, and that was misleading us. We knew, for instance, that costs for claim calls had to be larger than benefits inquiries because of the relative length of the calls. This was very important to determine because 50% of the calls from our single largest group was for claims issues. We knew that quality problems raise costs so finding and understanding our quality problems was critical to finding our cost opportunities."

New Information Achieved New Decisions

After AIM's implementation, Kerry reports, the initial results were very interesting. "We were able to identify right, away which lines of business cost more than others and why. We also had some surprises. Certainly AIM confirmed the areas we thought were costly, but it also showed us other high expense areas that we either only suspected or had not even had a clue about!"
"Some of our 'biggest surprises' were in the area of benefit inquiries. We were shocked to find that some simple benefit inquiry calls were among our most expensive. The cost came from the time staff needed to put a call on hold to get help from a more experienced or knowledgeable colleague." Jim agreed and added, "AIM identified, for each LOB (line of business) and call types, where these higher expense calls were occurring and why. By analyzing specific customers and their call types, it became clear that certain clients and client segments caused much higher costs. This pointed out the need to add specific content to the Vytra website that would allow these clients to find the information they needed quickly without calling us."
Kerry added, "We have made some corrections now, but many more are coming. Other AIM information showed that some costs were not a result of Vytra's actions, but our member employers' HR managers. Some employers weren't providing our HMO benefit information to their employees and this was causing lots of calls about basic benefits. We eliminated those by helping our largest clients provide better orientation programs about their healthcare benefit programs."
"With AIM's Models we now track inquiries, claims and complaints, for every one of our services and identify exactly the areas that need to be reviewed and addressed. We have real information so we institute re-training, new procedures and re-pricing strategies quickly and see results very quickly."
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